The house of Babel

Every Chinese book take the pronunciation of suffix “儿(er)” as a big problem. Some books say that is the big part of learning Chinese, if you could not learn suffix “儿(er)”, you are not really learning Chinese. Hearing that, a lot of foreign students got scared.

Suffix “儿” is a a retroflex sound. Curve your tongue a little bit, so you get it. It is very easy, isn’t it?

Suffix “儿” is a pronunciation phenomenon whereby the “儿” in modern Chinese combined with other syllables to give a retroflex sound. After you added that, it sounds cute.

Not all the Chinese put suffix “儿(er)” in their every sentences. It is mainly used in the north of China, like Beijing.

In the south of China, barely could you hear somebody put so many “儿(er)”s behind everything.

A lot of foreign people could not pronounce zh ch sh correctly.

when we practise pronouncing z c s and zh ch sh, normally we add i to that, eg, zi ci si and zhi chi shi. In wikipedia, they are explained as following.

Pronunciation of initials (From Pinyin wikipedia)

From my experience, when you pronounce zi ci si, the front part of your teeth bite each other. When you pronounce zhi chi shi, the two sides of your teeth bite each other.

Not so many foreign can pronounce yan and yang correctly.

The difference between yan and yang in fact is the difference between n [n] and ng [ŋ].

First let’s figure out where we are pronouncing those. When we pronounce n [n], we can feel it is in the front part of your mouth, or oral cavity. When we pronounce ng [ŋ], we can feel it is close the back part of the oral cavity, exactly near to the part that connected to your nose, or nasal cavity.

when you pronounce a[a], you can feel that was in the middle of your oral cavity.

The left thing is to combine a[a] with n [n] and ng [ŋ]. You know, when two pronunciations come together, there is a transition from a[a] with n [n], from a[a] to ng [ŋ]. In such time, you have to pronounce the first part and soon you have to get ready for the second part. As a result, they sound like an [an] and ang [ɑŋ].

After you combine another y, they sound like yan [iɛn] and yang [iɑŋ] respectively.

So be careful, yan is not yang, and yang is not yan.

Also Yin and Yang (阴阳) does not sound like [in n iɛn].

The Finals in Chinese (From Pinyin wikipedia)

Basically, for foreign students, it is better to practise the vowels first. They are a o e i u ü. There is some reason why the six vowels are in such order. The feature to pronounce the vowels is that the size of your mouth turns smaller and flatter.

vowels

Remember that when you pronounce a, the size of your mouth is the biggest time in Chinese.

We were created to pronounce anything closely if you practise in the right way.

Normally you were shown the Chinese Syllable Onset in the following way. If you were Chinese, there was no meaning to look at that. Since you already knew that.

If you were foreign people, even you look at that, it could not make so much sense to you. Because you did not learn how to pronounce that.

声母表 (From汉语拼音方案- Wikipedia)

For Chinese, we can know the characters under every Syllable represent the pronunciation. You know, in old China, there is no alphabets like a, b, c, d. Some simple characters were used to describe the pronunciation.

So if we change the characters to alphabets, it would be the following.

For foreign people, when they study Chinese, how to write the Hanzi always annoys everybody. A lot of people have no idea what Hanzi means.

Generally, you can take one character as a picture in a square. You have to pay attention to the balance in the square. Maybe you can think about that when you do something, you have to pay attention to the people around you. If you lose the balance, the beauty will be destroyed.

square

You probably will ask, there are so many styles of calligraphy, how to master the marrow of that? The spirit is the same. Every style of calligraphy has to pay attention to the balance beauty in the square.

styles of calligraphy (From 汉字 - Wikipedia)

After you get used to the square, then you can throw away the square. You can write one big character in one paper. In such time, in your brain, you still have to think about the balance beauty on the paper.